The Conservative Bible Project is a project utilizing the "best of the public" to render God's word into modern English without liberal translation distortions.[1] A Colbert Report interview featured this project.[2] We completed a first draft of our translation of the New Testament on April 23, 2010.

Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. There are three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning are, in increasing amount:

lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts introduced by Christ

lack of precision in modern language

translation bias, mainly of the liberal kind, in converting the original language to the modern one.

Experts in ancient languages are helpful in reducing the first type of error above, which is a vanishing source of error as scholarship advances understanding. English language linguists are helpful in reducing the second type of error, which also decreases due to an increasing vocabulary. But the third -- and largest -- source of translation error requires conservative principles to reduce and eliminate.[3]

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:[4]

Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias. For example, the Living Bible translation has liberal evolutionary bias;[5] the widely used NIV translation has a pro-abortion bias.[6]

Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other feminist distortions; preserve many references to the unborn child (the NIV deletes these)

Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity[7]; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[8]

Utilize Terms which better capture original intent: using powerful new conservative terms to capture better the original intent;[9] Defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words that have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".

Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction[10] by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";[11] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census

Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.

Exclude Later-Inserted Inauthentic Passages: excluding the interpolated passages that liberals commonly put their own spin on, such as the adulteress story

Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels

Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."

Thus, a project has begun among editors at Conservapedia to translate the Bible in accordance with these principles. The translated Bible can be found here.

It is very important to translate the Bible correctly. As it is written, "I warn everyone who hears the prophetic words in this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words in this prophetic book, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city described in this book" (Revelation 22, 18-19). See also Deuteronomy 4:2 (Conservative Bible): "Do not add to the word that I command you, and do not subtract from it, so that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you."

Benefits include:

mastery of the Bible, which is priceless

mastery of the English language, which is valuable

thorough understanding of the differences in Bible translations, particularly the historically important King James Version

benefiting from activity that no public school would ever allow; a Conservative Bible could become a text for public school courses

political issues can become a pathway to evangelizing liberals

liberals will oppose this effort, but they will have to read the Bible to criticize this, and that will open their minds

this project has a unifying effect on various Christian denominations, and serves as an important counterweight to liberal efforts to divide conservative candidates based on religion

How long would this project take? There are about 8000 verses in the New Testament. At a careful rate of translating about four verses an hour, it would take one person 2000 hours, or about one year working full time on the project.

Possible Approaches

Here are possible approaches to creating a conservative Bible translation:

identify faulty pro-liberal terms used in existing Bible translations, such as "government", and suggest more accurate substitutes

identify the omission of liberal terms for vices, such as "gambling", and identify where they should be used

identify conservative terms that are omitted from existing translations, and propose where they could improve the translation

identify terms that have lost their original meaning, such as "word" in the beginning of the Gospel of John, and suggest replacements, such as "truth"

An existing translation might license its version for improvement by the above approaches, much as several modern translations today are built on prior translations. Alternatively, a more ambitious approach would be to start anew from the best available ancient transcripts.

In stage one, the translation could focus on word improvement and thereby be described as a "conservative word-for-word" translation. If greater freedom in interpretation is then desired, then a "conservative thought-for-thought" version could be generated as a second stage.

In the United States and much of the world, the immensely popular and respected King James Version (KJV) is freely available and in the public domain. It could be used as the baseline for developing a conservative translation without requiring a license or any fees. Where the KJV is known to be deficient due to discovery of more authentic sources, exceptions can be made that use either more modern public domain translations as a baseline, or by using the original Greek or Hebrew.

There are 66 books in the KJV, comprised of 1,189 chapters, 31,102 verses, and 788,280 words.[12] The project could begin with translation of the New Testament, which is only 27 books, 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, and
less than 200,000 words.

Retranslation at rate of 20 verses a day would complete the entire New Testament in about a year. With 5 good retranslators, that would be an average of only 4 verses a day per translator. At a faster rate of 20 verses per day by 5 good translators, the entire New Testament could be retranslated in less than 3 months.

First Example - Liberal-Promoted Falsehood

The earliest, most authentic manuscripts of the Gospel According to Luke lack this verse fragment set forth at the start of Luke 23:34:[13]

Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

Is this a corruption of the original, perhaps promoted by liberals without regard to its authenticity? This does not appear in any other Gospel, and the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals, although it does not appear in the earliest and best manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke. It should not appear in a conservative Bible, because in point of fact Jesus might never had said it at all.

Second Example - Dishonestly Shrewd

At Luke 16:8, the NIV describes an enigmatic parable in which the "master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly." But is "shrewdly", which has connotations of dishonesty, the best term here? Being dishonestly shrewd is not an admirable trait.

The better conservative term, which became available only in 1851, is "resourceful". The manager was praised for being "resourceful", which is very different from dishonesty. Yet not even the ESV, which was published in 2001, contains a single use of the term "resourceful" in its entire translation of the Bible.

Advantages to a Conservative Bible Online

There are several striking advantages to a conservative approach to translating the Bible online:

participants learn enormously from the process

liberal bias - and lack of authenticity - become easier to recognize and address

by translating online, this utilizes the growing online resources that improve accuracy

supported by conservative principles, the project can be bolder in uprooting and excluding liberal distortions

the project can adapt quickly to future threats from liberals to biblical integrity

access is free and immediate to the growing internet audience, for their benefit

the ensuing debate would flesh out -- and stop -- the infiltration of churches by liberals pretending to be Christian, much as a vote by legislators exposes the liberals

this would bring the Bible to a new audience of political types, for their benefit; Bible courses in college Politics Departments would be welcome

this would debunk the pervasive and hurtful myth that Jesus would be a political liberal today

References

↑A superb source that has the Hebrew and Greek text with clickable links to English translations is the Interlinear Bible. Another terrific source is the Blueletter Bible, where anyone can click on "SHOW STRONG'S" at the top right to obtain the Greek, and then edit a book in the chart here (upper right). A third resource, which has the original Greek, is the Greek Bible.

↑The committee in charge of updating the bestselling version, the NIV, is dominated by professors and higher-educated participants who can be expected to be liberal and feminist in outlook. As a result, the revision and replacement of the NIV will be influenced more by political correctness and other liberal distortions than by genuine examination of the oldest manuscripts. As a result of these political influences, it becomes desirable to develop a conservative translation that can serve, at a minimum, as a bulwark against the liberal manipulation of meaning in future versions.

↑Additional less important guidelines include (1) adherence to a concise and dignifying style, such as use of "who" rather than "that" when referring to people and also use glorifying language for the remarkable achievements and (2) recognizing that Christianity introduced powerful new concepts that even the Greek and Hebrew were inadequate to express, but modern conservative language can express well.

↑For example, in 1611 the conservative concept of "accountability" had not yet developed, and the King James Version does not use "accountable to God" in translating Romans 3:19; good modern translations do.